The Maryland District Attorney’s Office (EU.) released today a 456-page report documenting the sexual abuse committed by 156 members of the Catholic clergy against more than 600 child victims in the Archdiocese of Baltimore during the last eight decades.
“From the 1940s to 2002 more than a hundred priests and other employees of the Archdiocese committed horrific and repeated abuses against the most vulnerable children in their communities,” the report states.
“Time and again members of the church hierarchy have resolutely refused to acknowledge allegations of sexual abuse against children for as long as possible,” it added.
The document is published with redactions that cover the names and references that could identify almost a hundred people. The list of alleged abusers include dozens of priests, friars and at least two nuns.
“The overwhelming extent of the abuse itself reveals the culpability of the Church hierarchy,” the report notes. “The high number of abusers and victims, the depravity of abusers’ behavior, and the frequency with which abusers are gave the opportunity to continue harassing children are astonishing”.
State Attorney General Anthony Brown said that in 2018 his office launched a grand jury investigation into the Archdiocese, which has some 518,000 faithful in 145 parishes.
“The investigation examined the complaints about crimes for the sexual abuse of minors perpetrated by members of the clergy, seminarians, deacons and other members of the Archdiocese,” added the prosecutor.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, in western Maryland, has about 550 priests, 160 deacons, 55 friars, and 803 nuns, and manages five hospitals, about thirty residences for the elderly, 20 diocesan, parochial and private schools, and four universities.
Also, the investigation extended to the “efforts of the leadership of the Catholic Church to conceal and cover up this sexual abuse, with hundreds of thousands of documents dating from the 1940s and produced by the Archdiocese,” Brown said.
Before a judge authorized yesterday Tuesday the publication of the Prosecutor’s report, Archbishop William Lori had released a message urging Catholics to pray for survivors of abuse.
“More than anything, at this moment, I pause to acknowledge and validate that the vile and horrific abuse subject to the Prosecutor’s investigation represents serious betrayal, and that it has had devastating consequences for the surviving victims,” Lori said.
SNAP, the largest network for survivors of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergysaid in a statement that the Maryland District Attorney’s report “contains more names of abusers than Church officials had revealed.”
The group demanded that Archbishop Lori explain “why his list is deficient and that he answer what Church officials have hidden and why.”